We’ve been working on perfecting our no-waste bulk soap delivery methods for years. Creating easy and convenient closed loop refill systems for Fillaree’s all-natural cleaning products is the foundation of our company. After much trial and error, and a few duds that totally flopped, we’ve finally struck gold with our new bag-in-a-box design! The details of this journey are fascinating and we can't wait to share them with you in another post coming soon! We’ve been testing and using these containers with more than 50 refill partners for over a year now, and it works fabulously! So, we’ve finally adapted it for our in-home (individual) subscription-based refillers and are thrilled to officially roll it out for all of our refillers, online and in-store -- it’s our new grab-and-go option for storefront refillers!
There are a number of AMAZING things to note about this new packaging.
First and foremost, let’s talk about the “bag” inside the box. It’s called a Smart Bottle® and it’s manufactured right here in North Carolina! If you’re following along with other happenings at Fillaree, you’ll know this is the 2nd big win for keeping our supply chain as close to home as possible! (Read about our new partnership with Carolina Gold Sunflower Farm here.)
The Smart Bottle® is:
- Incredibly durable -- will withstand lots and lots of washes, refills, and returns!
- Super lightweight, so its carbon footprint and cost of shipping and returning is much less than our previous hard plastic bottles.
- Very easy to clean
- Recyclable at the end of its long life
Now, let’s examine the box it comes in! The box, made and printed in the USA, serves two purposes: it’s both a shipping container and a dispensing stand! Once it arrives at your home, you just punch out the perforated sections, attach the pump or nozzle (depending on the product you ordered) and it will hold the Smart Bottle® in the correct position in a cupboard or pantry until you’re ready to refill. It creates your own little refill station at home! Plus you can reuse, compost, or recycle the box when you no longer need it.
The Bag-in-a-Box design boasts a couple more exciting changes:
- It brings down the cost of refilling for our subscribers by an average of 15% per ounce (varies per product) plus an extra $1 off for returning the empty bags for our in-store refillers.
- It doubles the quantity of Fillaree product that we send out in each shipment for subscribers, reducing the number of refills each subscriber gets annually and cutting back on costs and environmental effects of shipping.
- It reduces the number of return shipping trips for subscribers, as the refiller hangs on to the Smart Bottles® until they’ve collected 3 or more to send back together, rather than sending back a bottle each time it’s emptied.
From a purely operational standpoint, we are loving this shift in the Fillaree factory! The bag-in-a-box design streamlines our operations greatly. They are easier to fill, quicker to pack, and easier to store – win, win, win! Coupled with our new dish washing partner, Don’t Waste Durham, who keeps our returned bags cleaned and sanitized for us, we are relishing the extra time available to our team to take care of customers (we were able to expand storefront hours again), take care of ourselves and have restful time off, and envision and test exciting innovations for Fillaree’s future!
So far, we couldn’t be happier with this big change, and we can’t wait to hear what you think about it when you get your first Bag-in-a-Box Refill!